About this specific stone:
This one is a labelled stone which shows the nice Landscape with red House near a hill, there are trees around and a fence part the area from the cornfield. On the Top of the Label is written “La Lorraine” and there is a shortcut “EGS” on the right bottom corner, probably standing for the supplier/distributor of these stones. This is a mid sized stone.

General Information on Lorraine Rouge / Rouge Du Salm:Firstly extensive explained and named from Henk Bos in his Grinding and Honing Part 4 “Belgian Waterwhetstones”. Henks statement was that the stones being sold as labelled Lorraine Stones are the same stones which were earlier known from the Belgium Quarries as Rouge Du Salm / Engl.: Salm Rouge. They have been extracted in the past from the layers called “Veine Lorraine” or “Veine Rouge Du Salm”.

The Rouge Du Salm / Salm Rouge appears as a special layer within two BBW Layers and can be identified due to its color and behavior when honing. The color tends to go into a wine red or a darker violet and less into blue. My theory on these stones is that stones being broken out in the middle of the layer might appear less BBW like. This means they appear with darker violet to blue bending or swirls, sometimes with white inclusions (on working surface) or lines (from a side look). The other stones i own (La Lorraine, Goldfisch Wetzstein) appeared more like a typical Rouge Du Salm / red BBW with the fine grained Salm structure. Some stones might appear mixed up and show up all the properties.

The stones also work quite fast with a thick slurry and a bit pressure and can be used in a lower progression (>4K) up to finishing with plain water into the area of (>8K). The grit rating can further more estimated when using oil, i would guess its possible to reach around (10K).

After owning around eight of these stones i can underline the statement from Henk. Actually it seems that within this layer the structure and appearance widely differs.

Suppliers of the Lorraine Rouge / Rouge Du Salm:Actually there have been quite a lot of companies selling these stones. First to mention here the company F&Co. (Fassbinder & Co, Solingen)which sold the Lorraine Rouge / Rouge Du Salm Stones under the Trademark “Goldfisch Wetzstein”. They also sold Thurigian Water Hones in the past. More on Fassbinder & Co., Solingen in the companies section.

Then there is a company named D. Giovannacci, L. & B. Ghelfi, which labelled the stones with a red label and the text M.P.O.P. (Meules, Pierres, Outillage, Produits), which is probably a precurser of F.G.B.C. (F. Ghelfi, Birroleau & Cie.). The shortcut M.P.O.P. was found on some of the older documents and invoices.

The third Label which came up was a re-labelled “Goldfisch Wetzstein”. Actually this could be a one time example, because under the Goldfisch label there was a “Fox Razor Hone “ label.

Devleeschouwer, Mullard, Goemaere“Underground Workings of Slate Vein and Coticule in the commune of Vielsam (Belgium): The Geological Risk Management through Database and GIS”Post-Mining 2005, November 16-17, Nancy, FranceLINK